Windows 8.1 officially finished; nobody to get it until launch day

MSDN, TechNet, and volume license customers will all have to wait.

Microsoft confirmed this morning that Windows 8.1 has been released to manufacturing ahead of its October 18 retail launch.

Microsoft also confirmed rumors that the new operating system would not be made available early to any customers. Traditionally, the company has made its new operating systems available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, as well as volume license customers.

This allowed developers to test and update their applications ahead of release day to ensure that there were no day one upsets and similarly allowed IT departments to try out the new software.

For reasons that aren't at all apparent, Microsoft has decided that both of these groups can wait. Just as is the case for people upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1, the software will become downloadable globally as soon as it's October 18 in New Zealand; this will be 4am PT on October 17.

With a raft of new APIs and new capabilities for Metro-style Windows Store apps, the usual early access would seem important. The strong implication is that come launch day in October, there won't be any software that actually takes advantage of Windows 8.1's new software capabilities, because developers won't have had a chance to develop or test it.

110 Reader Comments

I'm smiling all the way until AAA gaming developers make steam linux or mac platforms a priority. Not so sure on OS X I run it virtually to check it out. it's far better than windows 8 but i'm stuck with windows 7 for now.

I pray that linux can get traction as a platform. I would have been on it for decades if not for AAA games being windows only.

Windows is now a backwards compatible dogs breakfast poison.

Oh my god, could you fit any more fucking hyperbole into a single post?

With as bad as vanilla Win 8 is, you'd think they'd want 8.1 out there ASAP. After all I'm sure there are plenty of people (me included) holding off any upgrade plans until they see if 8.1 fixes everything they don't like about 8.0...

It's interesting, because there are really two or three narratives about Windows 8. The first, and most prevalent story, is that Windows 8 is bad because Microsoft tried to shoehorn a tablet interface into Windows. This was shown before the Win8 release, and after, with YouTube videos expressing confusion and frustration, bloggers decrying the changes, and popular opinion mostly fits in with this story. Most enterprise customers so far in my experience have stuck with Windows 7 and have little to no adoption of Windows 8.

A second narrative is that Windows 8 is great, and people just need to learn how awesome the start screen is in everyday use. People who say this often express frustration with how users are "unwilling to learn" or "embrace change" and often dismiss or outright insult critics of Windows 8. Some strong Microsoft advocates (on this site and others) hold these beliefs, and act as if Windows 8 was mostly a success.

Sales numbers and adoption in the real world don't bear out the second view.

A third perspective, which you hear a bit less but does come up, is that Windows 8 is a fantastic upgrade under the hood, adding great technology and improvements, but was crippled by frustrating UI and annoying front-end changes that look unfinished and slapped together at best. You hear this about Server 2012 as well.

As you can gather, I fall into the third category. The problem I see with 8.1 is that Microsoft didn't ditch the tablet UI or really back away from the strange choices that define the problematic parts of the Win8 experience. Instead they patched some of them over and added in some cues for consumer recognition. the Start button, which still drives the Start Screen (versus the Start Menu which consumers expect and most longtime Windows users prefer). Microsoft listened to criticisms, but made superficial changes which do not address the fundamental issues.

I think Windows 8.1 will not change IT or consumer adoption rates significantly. As long as Dell and HP offer Windows 7 downgrades for enterprise users, Win7 will continue to be the status quo in businesses. Consumers will continue to be standoffish about the new OS, and adopt iOS and Android devices more and more for day to day usage.

OMG THIS! I totally agree. I fall into the third cat as-well. I feel Windows 8 is great under the hood, but Metro is perhaps the most useless UI ever for a desktop OS. ESPECIALLY when there are no good apps. MS turned Windows into an app-ecosystem like system that no one ever asked for and do not like. Big failure on their part.

So what you MEANT to say was that pirates will have access to Windows 8.1 immediately, while paying customers who rely upon the incompetent distribution practices of Microsoft will not be getting it until "launch day".

The idea of "launch day" should have died with the invention of the Internet. If your product is not available to your users within 1 hour of it 'going gold' and receiving the final stamp of approval, your business is a failure. Flat out. It doesn't matter that it's "wrong" to pirate your product, that's just an element of confusion in the discussion. The real issue is that your job is distributing the product to your customer, and some people are beating you at performing your own job working in their free time for no pay. How could you be more pathetically useless as a distributor?

Steve-o needed to demonstrate one last time he doesn't really grok the digital distribution age?

Or OEMs putting pressure on?

More like he does understand his market, and there is a large demand for hard media. Both in the non-leading edge user base, and in the "omg, I don't have a working internet box here" space. Most software can be digital. But the OS the box is built on? Not always.

To be fair, the non leading-edge user base probably isn't all that concerned about installing a new version of an OS on launch day.

So what you MEANT to say was that pirates will have access to Windows 8.1 immediately, while paying customers who rely upon the incompetent distribution practices of Microsoft will not be getting it until "launch day".

The idea of "launch day" should have died with the invention of the Internet. If your product is not available to your users within 1 hour of it 'going gold' and receiving the final stamp of approval, your business is a failure. Flat out. It doesn't matter that it's "wrong" to pirate your product, that's just an element of confusion in the discussion. The real issue is that your job is distributing the product to your customer, and some people are beating you at performing your own job working in their free time for no pay. How could you be more pathetically useless as a distributor?

All your outrage seems a bit silly when this is Microsoft's position on it:

Quote:

"Because this release was built and delivered at a much faster pace than past products, and because we want to ensure that you get the very highest quality product, we made the decision to complete the final validation phases prior to distributing the release,"

So apparently it's RTM, but it's not finished yet. Those two used to be the same thing, but it isn't in this case. It makes sense to not release something to the general public through the Windows Store when it's not actually finished. It'd be nice if meanwhile it were available to MSDN subscribers and other limited channels, but presumably it also takes work to make, QA and distribute such intermediate builds.

I have no data to back this idea, but perhaps the delayed release is related to the demise of technet? They want people to have no choice but to update via their app store. This will be proven false if you can also download the upgrade, we shall see.

With as bad as vanilla Win 8 is, you'd think they'd want 8.1 out there ASAP. After all I'm sure there are plenty of people (me included) holding off any upgrade plans until they see if 8.1 fixes everything they don't like about 8.0...

It's interesting, because there are really two or three narratives about Windows 8. The first, and most prevalent story, is that Windows 8 is bad because Microsoft tried to shoehorn a tablet interface into Windows. This was shown before the Win8 release, and after, with YouTube videos expressing confusion and frustration, bloggers decrying the changes, and popular opinion mostly fits in with this story. Most enterprise customers so far in my experience have stuck with Windows 7 and have little to no adoption of Windows 8.

A second narrative is that Windows 8 is great, and people just need to learn how awesome the start screen is in everyday use. People who say this often express frustration with how users are "unwilling to learn" or "embrace change" and often dismiss or outright insult critics of Windows 8. Some strong Microsoft advocates (on this site and others) hold these beliefs, and act as if Windows 8 was mostly a success.

Sales numbers and adoption in the real world don't bear out the second view.

A third perspective, which you hear a bit less but does come up, is that Windows 8 is a fantastic upgrade under the hood, adding great technology and improvements, but was crippled by frustrating UI and annoying front-end changes that look unfinished and slapped together at best. You hear this about Server 2012 as well.

As you can gather, I fall into the third category. The problem I see with 8.1 is that Microsoft didn't ditch the tablet UI or really back away from the strange choices that define the problematic parts of the Win8 experience. Instead they patched some of them over and added in some cues for consumer recognition. the Start button, which still drives the Start Screen (versus the Start Menu which consumers expect and most longtime Windows users prefer). Microsoft listened to criticisms, but made superficial changes which do not address the fundamental issues.

I think Windows 8.1 will not change IT or consumer adoption rates significantly. As long as Dell and HP offer Windows 7 downgrades for enterprise users, Win7 will continue to be the status quo in businesses. Consumers will continue to be standoffish about the new OS, and adopt iOS and Android devices more and more for day to day usage.

Very similar to Vista... under the hood incredible improvement over XP, in the user space not so much... maybe 9 will focus on the UI enough to make it the huge leap forward in the frontend that 8 was in the backend.

Another classic Ballmer screw-up, they really ought to fire that idiot.

He earned quite nice amount of money for being an idiot...

Wonder why they didn't release to MSDN et all don't get it... Doesn't really make sense since 8.1 supposedly fixes a lot of thing that was wrong with 8.0 like search... And then you want to spread the word "look how good new Win is!"So why not this time?

Oh well not sure my old computers would benefit from Win8 but I might acctually give my laptop a spin with 8.1... Since I don't really mind Win 8 as much as some people here seem to do.. I just think Microsoft should have put Modern UI as an option...

Another classic Ballmer screw-up, they really ought to fire that idiot.

How is this a screw-up? They are offering their code to OEMs to make sure 8.1-designed devices are available for the holiday season, and will release to everyone once they are sure it's stable enough for general hardware access, and not just the new OEM stuff they're getting ready right now.

There's literally nothing about this that speaks of being a screw-up, especially since October was always the planned release of 8.1

How is this a screw-up? They are offering their code to OEMs to make sure 8.1-designed devices are available for the holiday season, and will release to everyone once they are sure it's stable enough for general hardware access, and not just the new OEM stuff they're getting ready right now.

There's literally nothing about this that speaks of being a screw-up, especially since October was always the planned release of 8.1

In what way do the mere MSDN subscribers verify their apps will be working on launch date? Unless I'm missing something, MS is planning for the independent developers to be scrambling to get patched after the general public gets their hands on it rather than before. There's no RC, just a preview.

Granted, it's not a huge upgrade internally and old apps _should_ work, but I hate banking on "should".

This allowed developers to test and update their applications ahead of release day to ensure that there were no day one upsets and similarly allowed IT departments to try out the new software.

We developers already had the opportunity to do this by using the preview to test.

There's no documented changes from 8.1 preview to RTM (there may be undocumented ones, but that's a seperate issue that is mostly not a problem with Microsoft anymore) and there's no excuse for software that works in 8 and doesn't work in 8.1 (none of my software needed any real work).

I still think this move by MS is dumb, but from a developer standpoint it's irrelevant. From a consumer standpoint though, I want my goddamn 8.1 and I'm used to being able to get it! I suspect the IT guys would very much like the final product in their hands too.

However I think the people most effected by this are people like you: Tech writers who would like to have a bit of an opportunity to play with the final product so they can let the unwashed masses know what it's like. That's something the preview is probably worthless for (exhibit a: Window 8 preview, which was awful vs Windows 8 final, which is polarising, but not awful).

Given the extremely rushed push to RTM, I have a sneaking suspicion that Window 8.1 is going to be an incredibly buggy mess and will be such a disaster as to completely finish off Windows 8 altogether, and actually destroy the Windows franchise itself, at least in the consumer arena.

I'm smiling all the way until AAA gaming developers make steam linux or mac platforms a priority. Not so sure on OS X I run it virtually to check it out. it's far better than windows 8 but i'm stuck with windows 7 for now.

I pray that linux can get traction as a platform. I would have been on it for decades if not for AAA games being windows only.

Windows is now a backwards compatible dogs breakfast poison.

You say that like backwards compatibility is somehow a bad thing. Linux is pretty good if you're only using free software with access to source etc, but quickly gets nasty if you're not.

It's a shame that MSDN, Technet and SA subscribers don't get access to the Win 8.1 RTM!

And to not get Server 2012 R2 after RTM is even worse! I can't think of a single reason for this except either that it isn't finished or that Microsoft is gradually dismantling the support for IT-professionals on purpose to force companies on to Azure.

The URL points to marketing BS, justification for delaying the release.

For people who already own a Win 8 device, the delay could be especially annoying if they didn't like the way the device currently works, and they are probably some of those. MS is taking a calculated shot that they'll piss-off fewer people by delaying the release then if it got out for broad review or word-of-mouth. My suspicion is that it won't play well with reviewers. October release date might be in the next financial quarter and MS is attempting to jockey the quarterly report.

... So apparently it's RTM, but it's not finished yet. Those two used to be the same thing, but it isn't in this case. It makes sense to not release something to the general public through the Windows Store when it's not actually finished. ...

Your argument is almost sound... but the real failing in this process is that it doesn't make sense to release something that's not finished... even to OEM partners. The fact that the code isn't finished means that a patch has to go out to all of the systems that the OEMs build with the RTM version. That's a time-bomb just waiting to go off!

Consider the possibilities: When do they release the patch? Do the OEMs have to install it before they have a shippable product? Does MS put the patch off a little bit longer, and make the retailers install it? Do they put it off until the absolute last moment, and make the consumers install it? And regardless of who gets to install it, does it come on a DVD? -- Oops! Most Win8 machines don't come with an optical drive, so that doesn't work! -- Does it come on a USB stick? Well, that's just more cost rolled into the process, so who gets to absorb that cost? Or does it install over the internet? What if you put it off too long, and a consumer is required to install the patch over an internet connection? Does that mean that MS is going to try to pull the same "always connected" snafu with Win 8.1 that back-lashed on them with the Xbox One? What happens to the consumer who has no internet connection, when they buy their new Win 8.1 tablet? If that RTM version isn't "finished" yet, then just how bad off is this non-connected consumer really going to be?

Of course, obviously not all of that is going to happen in the real world... but some of it might. Honestly, there are already too many things which can go wrong in the best of circumstances... and it just feels to me like Microsoft is creating more opportunities for problems, without a clear and compelling reason. (Either that, or there really isn't a valid reason to put off release to developers and MSDN partners.)

if windows 8.1 is still not finished whatever they send to OEM's is not RTM

How do you come to that conclusion? It is, by definition, RTM. "Release To Manufacturing" -- it was "released" to "manufacturing" (OEMs) therefore it is the "Release To Manufacturing" or "RTM" release. Being complete or not has nothing to do with it being RTM. If it's not complete all that means is that it's not complete.

Given the extremely rushed push to RTM, I have a sneaking suspicion that Window 8.1 is going to be an incredibly buggy mess and will be such a disaster as to completely finish off Windows 8 altogether, and actually destroy the Windows franchise itself, at least in the consumer arena.

Why would you think that? The release preview MS already offered is nice, stable, and a noticeable improvement on windows 8, especially when in comes to resolving a lot of the interface split-personality issues Win8 had.

So there already is a pre-release out that works well. Why would the release be worse?

... So apparently it's RTM, but it's not finished yet. Those two used to be the same thing, but it isn't in this case. It makes sense to not release something to the general public through the Windows Store when it's not actually finished. ...

Your argument is almost sound... but the real failing in this process is that it doesn't make sense to release something that's not finished... even to OEM partners. The fact that the code isn't finished means that a patch has to go out to all of the systems that the OEMs build with the RTM version. That's a time-bomb just waiting to go off!

Consider the possibilities: When do they release the patch? Do the OEMs have to install it before they have a shippable product? Does MS put the patch off a little bit longer, and make the retailers install it? Do they put it off until the absolute last moment, and make the consumers install it? And regardless of who gets to install it, does it come on a DVD? -- Oops! Most Win8 machines don't come with an optical drive, so that doesn't work! -- Does it come on a USB stick? Well, that's just more cost rolled into the process, so who gets to absorb that cost? Or does it install over the internet? What if you put it off too long, and a consumer is required to install the patch over an internet connection? Does that mean that MS is going to try to pull the same "always connected" snafu with Win 8.1 that back-lashed on them with the Xbox One? What happens to the consumer who has no internet connection, when they buy their new Win 8.1 tablet? If that RTM version isn't "finished" yet, then just how bad off is this non-connected consumer really going to be?

Of course, obviously not all of that is going to happen in the real world... but some of it might. Honestly, there are already too many things which can go wrong in the best of circumstances... and it just feels to me like Microsoft is creating more opportunities for problems, without a clear and compelling reason. (Either that, or there really isn't a valid reason to put off release to developers and MSDN partners.)

Tick, tick.

When was the last time you got a new computer, or installed a version of Windows, and did not immediately need to start downloading updates? It's kind of sketchy but at this point it is really par for the course.

The normal Windows 8 startup on a new computer already wants to make a connection to the network, because it is pushing you to sign into your computer using your Microsoft account. There is an option not too, but that option is even less obvious in 8.1 than it was in 8. Again, I'm not thrilled by this, but a network connection is strongly encouraged already.

Has anyone else thought that maybe this is such a secret because Microsoft wants to surprise everyone and go well beyond the minor fixes for the dreaded Start screen? Maybe Microsoft has finally caved and given PC users the choice between the traditional Start Menu and the new Tile Desktop? Maybe by keeping it hush it will be even more of a shock to everyone? Nay, just kidding.

When was the last time you got a new computer, or installed a version of Windows, and did not immediately need to start downloading updates? It's kind of sketchy but at this point it is really par for the course.

The normal Windows 8 startup on a new computer already wants to make a connection to the network, because it is pushing you to sign into your computer using your Microsoft account. There is an option not too, but that option is even less obvious in 8.1 than it was in 8. Again, I'm not thrilled by this, but a network connection is strongly encouraged already.

You bring up a valid point, to some extent. One problem that I see with your point is that the vast majority of the first-time-run downloads to which you refer are security patches, rather then interface bug fixes. (Obviously, those security patches can't even exist yet, as the final OS has yet to be released... theoretically, to anyone.) So that leads us back to the question of what type of features are currently considered "incomplete" by Microsoft. If they're talking about bugs which prevent the computer from operating as expected (such as clicking here, and the mouse click being detected over there because of a DPI bug, as PervertRyan mentioned earlier in this thread) then a failure to receive the update could become a serious problem. On the other hand, if we're only talking about incomplete features which require the internet to even be useful in the first place, then my hypothetical "non-connected" consumer wouldn't even notice the difference.

But in all honesty, the bottom line is that all we have for now is speculation and pontification; we won't know for sure whether or not this is the "royal screw up" that some of us fear, until the OS actually reaches customers.

So that leads us back to the question of what type of features are currently considered "incomplete" by Microsoft

Most likely drivers. If they give it to the OEMs, the OEMs make sure their drivers are up to date. Then in the mean time, MS finalizes all the generic drivers and works with any companies that might have issues with Windows 8.1 and their hardware.